The Amp Garage

For 2012 - 61.9% of all federal expenditures go to entitlements. 18.7% goes to defense. 7% goes to interest on the federal debt. Total outlays: $3.563 trillion. $3,563,000,000,000. One other observation about Canada - does the fact that the US protects North America, and Canada knows the US does and...

Perhaps it is our for profit health care system that is a major contributor to our debt problems. The other wealthy nations all have a universal health care system in place for their citizens. That and they do not go fighting wars all around the world. Do you really think that the primary drivers o...

I don't know if it can be fixed, but surely the richest country in the world can afford basic medical cover for all of it's people. I agree, and I think this should be a matter of nation security. But we're not the richest nation in the world. We're the biggest debtor nation in the world. $16T in d...

I'm curious about another cost factor. What percentage of medical procedures, treatments, and medications are created/invented/generated by the US medical community? My theory in this case is that the cost of inventing these things is covered by the US system, and most other countries are able to ad...

I would never call degrading or taking advantage of other people as achievement.

I agree. That does not mean the system is broken. It means that person is broken.

Discouraging achievement improves nothing, improves nobody's life.

Generally speaking, generalizations don't help. ( )

So there are exactly zero rich people with morals?

Perhaps if you became rich you could change that?

I find this "blame the 1%" stuff fascinating. I do not know anyone who would not like to be a lot wealthier than they are. Someone, anyone, please tell me how much you love paying your mortgage, or worse, rent (someone else's mortgage). If we confiscate *all* of the wealth (not just the income for t...

Colossal is exactly correct. All you have to do is tie the grounds together for however many relays you want to switch together. For instance, I have the bright switch tied into a relay that switches with the OD relay. The bright can either be ON, OFF, or ON for clean/off for OD. All I did was tie t...

Glad you got it working. I'm gonna have to go on an old-resistor search.

If you're getting significant noise when you touch preamp plates (not little sizzles, but pretty big "static" or pops) then you need to verify your relay wiring. Also send a jumper from the volume wiper to the "power amp in" jack and see if you have signal through the tone stack. Basically, since yo...

This is often due to the felt seal on the end of the shaft drying out. If the compressor goes several months without being used then the oil in the system is not circulated, and the felt dries out. This lets the freon leak out. It is very difficult to get the felt to re-soften. Often the compressor ...

I've used a jigsaw with a metal-cutting blade, then clean up w/ sandpaper. I put wide masking tape on the board and draw my line w/ a Sharpie on the tape. As mentioned, a dust mask is ESSENTIAL.

Tony - I concur. I used to play amps with a built-in reverb tank. But I've played on too many stages that are unstable. There's nothing quite like that reverb thunder clap at the wrong point in a song...

The old Orange Squeezer was Jay Graydon's "secret weapon" for his uber-smooth distortion tone. 335->Orange Squeezer->modified Deluxe Reverb=Peg solo (and countless others). If you aren't familiar with the Jay Graydon/David Foster project called "Airplay" - and if you like late-70's/early-80's West C...